


For Every Smile I Captured

by bluebottle762



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Autistic Character, Autistic Noctis, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt, M/M, Pining, no major spoilers, not spoiler free
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-09
Updated: 2018-01-09
Packaged: 2019-03-02 19:40:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13325103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebottle762/pseuds/bluebottle762
Summary: So he’d started capturing smiles. One by one, like pinning the memories of butterflies to his walls. Capturing and preserving the fluttering impermanence of it, so fast and fragile only the deftness of a lens and the speed of a shutter could catch it without damaging the original.





	For Every Smile I Captured

**Author's Note:**

> No big plot spoilers, just part of a conversation from Chapter 10 at the end. If you haven't played that yet it's fine, you won't be spoiled but you will be concerned.

In retrospect, it had started a lot earlier than Duscae. It had started before they’d even left Insomnia really, but the truth of it sat heavy on Prompto’s mind and threatened to push the whole ordeal to a boiling point he wasn’t ready to throw himself into. So, Duscae then. That was easier to swallow. It wasn’t wholly a lie either. Maybe it hadn’t started there, but it _had_ been where whatever inner constraint he’d been holding it all back with had snapped, and it had hit him like a charging Garulessa. Or a train. Or a behemoth. Something suitably massive and limb destroying, anyway.

It hadn’t even been spectacular, and in a lot of ways he knew that was worse. Way worse. When a small, everyday action pushes you off the previously safe path of denial and straight out and over the precipice of ‘Oh fuck, we have a problem’ you know you’re already irreparably fucked.

After several days of arm twisting and pleading from the moment Ignis had announced they were entering the region, they had visited the Chocobo Post. As it turned out, this had been a good call all round. Even Ignis had been wrangled into admitting a fondness for their new travelling companions, but it was Noct that had been the real victory. Honestly that was most of the problem.

He’d been petting Chocobos. Hesitantly, with unsure hands and a wide-eyed expression like a small child being introduced to farm animals for the first time. Which really wasn’t all that inaccurate of a comparison. If the first few shots of a tentative, uncertain Noctis (reaching out and up to brush his fingers over soft fluffy feathers) had been a stress on Prompto’s floodgates, the next snap of Noct with his arms around the neck of one with a genuine smile on his face was the breaking point.

There had been a physical rush, a sensation of missing not one but two whole steps on a flight of stairs, accompanied with an inexplicable breathlessness. With an unbidden gasp he’d been forced to stagger back a step or two, bumping hazily into the rental kiosk.

That had been the start of it, officially. Certainly from then on Noctis started to creep into his work at an increased regularity than he had before. There had always been candids capturing a Noctis that more professional lenses had no interest in, but this was different somehow. More. The increase in smiles, perhaps. Not that he hadn’t paid homage to those back in Insomnia, although at the time he’d classified his handful of genuine Noctis smiles primarily as insurance. Gentle, affectionate blackmail, as it were.

The fact that Noctis disliked his own smile so much or that it happened so infrequently hadn’t penetrated the thick bubble of teenage self absorption. Prompto’s stomach dropped every time he thought back on the Noct of three years ago, now able to view him with more clarity. From what he had been able to glean via Ignis’ retellings, Noct had always laboured under a fairly limited range of expression and as such had never been a smiley child. The phrase ‘through a thick haze of autism’ bubbled back up to the surface by way of linked explanation. Still, the thought that Noctis had needed him when he’d been too stupid and wrapped up in his own problems to notice was one that continued to agitate him. Like a twisting creature of anxiety and hurt housed deep inside his chest, it wrapped it’s heavy tendrils around his ribs and heart in an attempt to pull itself up and out into more physical being. It left him short of breath.

So he’d started capturing smiles. One by one, like pinning the memories of butterflies to his walls. Capturing and preserving the fluttering impermanence of it, so fast and fragile only the deftness of a lens and the speed of a shutter could catch it without damaging the original. Noct was delicate like that. That had been the realisation. That for all his broad shouldered, dark and seemingly impenetrable exterior what lay within resembled a soft golden glow against the darkness. A delicate light made up of a kaleidoscope of glass winged butterflies, honey coloured with flecks of brilliant blue, so fragile that even their gentle quivering movement risked their own destruction. Clustered together round the shape of a beating heart, the moment one flitted away towards the glassy dark surface and made contact with the world beyond through a smile felt wasted if not captured. Even back in Duscae they never survived the journey, fading slowly into death with the curve of his lips.

Quietly, Prompto wondered how many he had left to give.

“Don’t do this, I--!” Prompto was cut short by Gladio, grabbing ahold of him roughly by the face and shoving him backwards so hard he hit one the seats several feet behind him. Curling over the back of it, he stayed in place as the sickening scene they were creating continued to escalate. He felt something shatter, thin and brittle into a thousand fractured pieces as if the physical impact had knocked it from its place within him and sent it skittering across the floor of the train just like it had sent the rest of him.

“I get it, alright!? I get it!” Noct’s voice cracked, and with a lurch of horor Prompto knew his were not the only shards scattered across the floor. Inside his mind the image welled up like the tears that threatened at the edge of Noctis’ voice-- unreal and unwanted, slipping through grasping hands and spinning away towards a boiling point. A crystalline pool of crushed and shattered gold, tainted and blackened, brilliant blues corrupted into purple against the black. The jerky jittering of fragmented wings amongst the wreckage beating desperately to right themselves as Gladiolus continued his crushing assault.

“Then get a grip! Pull your head outta your ass already!”

The Prince’s mouth moved against words he did not possess, managing only a frustrated noise before he turned and stalked away down the train, stamping down heavily on the twitching remains of his own light.

The creature inside Prompto’s chest twisted and tugged, desperately pulling itself up against his throat as it pushed down against his heart for leverage. Noiselessly it screamed, wailing for him to follow and fix and soothe what he knew could not be saved.

“Noct!”  Finding his feet again he propelled himself after the retreating prince, wanting to reach out although his hands remained unresponsive, the thing in his chest pulling him forward by his sternum.

“Leave him.” Gladio’s tone brooked no argument, a solid command that rooted him to the spot, as if cemented by the solidifying wasteland of mingling and broken hearts at his feet. His chest felt constricted, as if the tendrilled thing inside him was expanding against his lungs and pulling at his ribs all at once, prohibiting him from drawing breath correctly.

Stunned and hollow, standing amidst the greying carnage of the most beautiful thing in the world, he allowed the creature his lungs with which to breathe. Shakily, it drew breath, and for the first time in all the months it had plagued him, from it’s first kindling until this moment- it spoke. A single word, in a dying withered voice born of grief, and compassion, and of the most tender self betrayal.

Love

And hopelessly, he knew it was.

**Author's Note:**

> The line in Chapter 10 is actually just "Don't do this--!" but it really sounds like he was starting to say 'I' before he got Gladio'd. Also if you scroll back up after the last line and start reading again it feels like a loop? So uh, that might or might not be a thing. Also you can rip autistic Noctis from my cold dead autistic hands.


End file.
